Dom Pannell's Blog

KFC in the Valley vs. KFC in South London

Carter has posted a topical thread, given that KFC in South London and its many, many variants was the topic of a very amusing conversation I had with some friends last night. Reading what Carter has to say, it seems that the situation in Silicon Valley is very different from over here.

Carter says there are only three KFCs in the Valley. There are certainly many, many more in this part of town. Unfortunately, KFC doesn’t have a restaurant finder for the UK, so there is no way for me to verify the true number but it’s a lot more than three for South London. Hell, it’s a lot more than three for the SE postcode.

It’s not just KFC either. Fried chicken is popular down here – there’s Chicken Shack, Chicken Cottage, Dallas Chicken, Dixie Chicken (not to be mixed up with Dixy Chicken), Tasty Chicken Perfect Chicken, Chicken Express, Chicken Spot, Chicken Land, Chicken Hut, Planet Chicken, Lickin Chicken… the list goes on and on AND THAT’S BEFORE WE COME TO THE BLATANT KFC RIPOFFS!!

The subject of yesterday’s conversation was the hilarity of some of the names of these fried chicken joints: there’s Morley’s Fried Chicken (MFC)

Tennessee Fried Chicken (TFC)

Dallas Chicken (RFC)

And spotted in Balham last night – sadly no photo yet – SFC… judging from its looks, the S stands for Salmonella.

I noticed the proliferation of fried chicken restaurants a few years ago and, like Carter, resolved to try one. In order to do the genre justice, I decided to visit the market leader and picked a KFC close to Clapham Junction. To this day I haven’t stopped apologising to the two friends, Mariagrazia (Mg) and Dip, who accompanied me.

We shared a bucket of boneless bites, some fries and a couple of Cokes.

The amount of meat of any quality in the bites was miniscule, so the only taste was that of the fat in which the crunchy brown morsels had been cooked. As the fries had been cooked in the same fat, that’s my resounding memory – fat. The only pleasant part of the experience was the Coke, which cut through the grease and provided a necessary counterbalance to the solid part of the meal.

The only thing that comes close to my KFC experience is when a Danish chap and I ordered a full ‘ración’ of pigs ears in Madrid (the difference being that I enjoyed the first couple of ears).

It’s hard to explain the feeling of liquid fat as it runs around one’s mouth, let’s just say that it’s not something I plan to make a habit of. To make things worse, as we trudged unhappily up Falcon Road (luckily we were heading to a comedy club, so the night did pick up) Mg pointed out that the smell of fat was lingering in our clothes…

Call me a spoilsport, but there are plenty of other establishments I want to try in the Silicon Valley area. KFC is not one of them.

Posted by dompannell at April 9, 2007 9:18 AM | TrackBack